PARLIAMENT HILL—“Death by China” became somewhat of a theme Wednesday as hundreds of Tibetans protested repression in China on the front lawn of Parliament while MPs and others were coincidently gathered for a lunch forum with the co-author of a book by that title.
As Tibetans formed the words “Enough” with their bodies—a statement on the recent suicides of 11 monks in Tibet, several of them in their teens—author Greg Autry described a pattern of incremental destruction he says the Chinese regime is inflicting on the Western world.
China’s rulers, he said, have a unique power shared by Apple founder Steve Jobs—the reality distortion field.
“Apple employees and friends of Jobs described it as Jobs’ ability to look one directly in the eye and lie with impunity,” he said.
“The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have grown up with a similar confidence in their own infallibility and power to define truth as rulers of a vast totalitarian state.”
Autry said no matter how heinous the regime abuses its people, cheats in its trading relationships, spies and hacks other governments, or openly prepares for war, the West remains under the spell of its “unwavering fake smile.”
By convincing western nations to compete for access to the promised riches of the Chinese market, the regime has kept them relatively silent on everything from tariffs to its environmental and human rights abuses.
Autry argues that China’s military is growing faster than its GDP, and its major hardware investments—including the J-20 stealth fighter/bomber and anti-aircraft carrier ballistic missiles—point to preparations for an offensive rather than defensive confrontation.
China’s increasingly aggressive claims in the South China Sea have sparked fears in the region, said Autry, pointing to Vietnam’s efforts to rapidly upgrade its military hardware by purchasing six submarines from Russia.
Efforts to ease Beijing into responsible global citizenship have failed, he said, and hopes that increased trade with China would reduce massive trade deficits have proven false.
Growing Trade Deficits
The United States runs a trade deficit of $1 billion a day with China, or some 2 percent of its GDP—the difference between the 1.5 anaemic growth seen now and a healthy 3.5 percent it should be seeing, he said. That deficit continues to grow, as it does in Canada. Canada’s trade deficit with China ran around 1.84 percent of GDP in 2006, about $26.8 billion to 1.86 percent in 2009, or some $28.5 billion.
“That alone would account for our recession,” he said, referring to his native U.S.
Autry called on nations to unite in an effort to pressure the regime on human rights and economic policy rather than succumbing to competing with each other for favours that never materialize.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Commonwealth Business Forum last week that China could not continue to run large trade surpluses with inflexible exchange rates. The U.S. has made the regime’s artificially undervalued currency a major point of contention, something Autry suggested other countries should do as well.
Before Autry spoke, the forum began with an unscheduled appearance by Dicki Chhoyang, a Canadian member of the Tibet Parliament-in-Exile’s six-member cabinet as the Minister of Education.
As her fellow Tibetans staged one of their largest protests on the Hill, Chhoyang told attendees that Tibet was seeing continued repression, with 10 people killed in one demonstration. Police maintain a presence inside and outside of temples and journalists are being kept outside of the country.
Tibetan protestors on the hill called on Harper to speak out, along with other world leaders, during the G-20 meetings in Cannes, France, and condemn the regime’s repressive measures across Tibet and also assess the escalating situation in Ngaba County in Eastern Tibet, where four young men and one woman set themselves ablaze.
Expecting the Chinese regime to solve such issues would mean trusting its proclamations to wish to do so, a ploy the regime uses to deflect criticism, said Yiyang Xia, senior director of Policy & Research in Washington D.C.
Xia told the forum that China’s judicial system has evolved over decades of communist rule, from one where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directly acted as the judiciary, to one where it did so through special committees behind closed doors.
“The reality however, is the leadership in Beijing is not committed to implementing rule of law, either in the short term or the long term,” he said.
610 Office
Over the years, Xia said, the CCP created a swath of legislation comparable to other countries, but when it came time to massively violate those same laws, which it does consistently but on individual cases, it created an extra-judicial entity to by-pass the system entirely.
That entity, the 610 Office, is the Gestapo-type agency responsible for suppressing Falun Gong.
While the CCP carried out such repressions through political movements in the past—targeting religious believers, land owners, intellectuals and others—it needed to take another approach in 1999 when it started its campaign of persecution or risk shattering the illusion of its judicial system, he said.
For that reason, the 610 office reports directly to the Party’s central committee and is able to carry out the persecution without a legal basis and use the state’s monopoly on information to justify the crackdown.
Former MP and Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) David Kilgour said incidents like the video of Wang Yueyue, a two-year old in China who was run over twice while onlookers avoided her bloody body, reveal the impact of the regime’s control on the Chinese people.
Kilgour argued that widespread fear made Chinese people reluctant to help the girl, a feeling common in authoritarian countries, according to Globe and Mail Beijing bureau chief Mark MacKinnon, whom Kilgour quoted.
Eighteen people saw Yueyue and did nothing to help. She later died in hospital of her injuries.
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